Rock 'n' Roll Damnation: Mutt Lange

"You're makin' out with school kids, winos and heads of state.
You even made it with the lady, who puts the little plastic bobbins on the Christmas cakes."

Otherwise known as the former Mr. Shania Twain, this piece of shit is responsible for taking suckage to new heights in the 80's and beyond. Let's have a look at the charges against him ...

Helped Make AC/DC dumber

Aside from the Boomtown Rats and Savoy Brown, Mutt really came to the world's attention when he took over AC/DC's production duties from Vanda and Young starting with the album "Highway to Hell." He did a good job. Phil Rudd's drums sound gargantuan and the performances, notably Bon Scott's, are incredible. The most noticeable shift is from bratty humor to leering, obvious sexual material.

I hear Mutt's influence most on "Touch Too Much," a song that reminds me of Bryan Adams who Mutt would work with later and treats us to the line "she wanted it hard, she wanted it fast, she liked it done medium rare." I don't even know what that means but it grosses me out.

From there he helped shove AC/DC from the Bon Scott era into the era of lunk-headed arena rock with "Back In Black,"and  "For Those About To Rock". They are the best non-Bon albums but also where I officially stop caring about AC/DC. They've re-hashed the same formula ever since.

Aided and Abetted Def Leppard's World Domination

Q: What has seven arms and sucks?

A: Def Leppard

Mutt was more than the band's producer, he was the Svengali of their slick, soul-less pop metal.

Theyset a standard in the 80's for which there was no turning back.

Forget False Metal, Helped Create False Rock

Foreigner, Loverboy. Remember them? They sucked and they dominated. This is the kind of shit that made me think I hated music back in the 80's."Heavy? On FM radio, Foreigner was heavy. It was either listen to that or Madonna. Take your pick.

Bryan Adams

Oh, Bryan Adams. I hate your voice as much as I hate you looking at your pock-marked face. Mutt shoved your music up my ass eight ways from Sunday and Con-con helped him do it.

He helped write "Everything I Do I Do It For You," and "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman," two of the most annoying and conceited love songs in history. "I...I...I," only I know how to love a woman properly, etc. Good job writing a love song about yourself.

Co-Wrote A Bunch of Shitty Songs

Co-wrote "All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You" by Heart. I hate any song that uses the term "making love." I hate any person who uses the term making love, actually. Mutt perfected this gruff yet sensitive pseudo-rock with Michael Bolton, Billy Ocean, and Huey Lewis.
Penned tunes with Reba McIntyre and helped Billy Ray Cyrus write "Only God (Could Stop Me Loving You)" Wow, I wonder if that song blows.
Eventually pandered down to Anne Murray Celine Dion and the Backstreet Boys.

Masterminded The Shania Twain Explosion

I don't know why Shania Twain's music doesn't offend me quite as much as some of Mutt's other projects. Maybe because she doesn't have a Michael Bolton husky voice or pretend to be playing rock music. It's new country, which by definition is bad so, with that in mind, it's not as annoying. It's still pretty annoying though, I've gotta tell you. Anyhow Mutt produced all her crap and then went ahead and married her but she divorced him. Ha!

Cemented his eternal douche-cred by producing Nickelback.

This an actual conversation I've had;

"What's that band from Canada that sucks?"

Me: "Nickelback?"

"Yeah, that's it."

Mutt co-wrote a song called "Something In Your Mouth," which I've not had the pleasure of hearing at this moment, but which I'm almost certain is about blowjobs. Yeccch. The something in my mouth is barf. Thanks a lot for putting in there.

Mutt, you set the standard for glossy, soul-less production after which there was no turning back.
(Incidentally, I wonder if you and Steve Albini were ever put in the same room together, you'd actually repel each other like magnets and both go flying across the room.)

You've written, or helped write, some of the most nauseating "makin' love," ballads in history and made the eighties a living hell for me and everyone I know.

Go to hell, Mutt Lange. I hate you.

Rock 'n' Roll Damnation: Desmond Child

 "They saved Hitler's cock. They hid it under a rock."

You may not know the face or even recognize the name but this fruitcake is personally responsible for much of what sucked shit in the last three decades. Let's check out this resume. Desmond Child, this is your life.

Wow

- After his own band, Desmond Child and Rouge, tanked, he was recruited by Paul Stanley to help write "I Was Made For Loving You," otherwise known as KISS's disco tune. It charted high and is to this day nearly universally reviled by the dorks that consider themselves hardcore KISS fans. He went on to write tunes on Animalize, Asylum, Crazy Nights & Hot In The Shade during KISS' non-make-up poofy hair glam rock period.

- He went on to pen bubble-gum metal anthems "You Give Love A Bad Name," "Livin' On A Prayer," and "Bad Medicine," with Bon Jovi, who always have and will suck, so no biggie there.

From there "I Hate Myself For Loving You" a decent Joan Jett tune from her unspectacular "Up Your Alley".It gets worse - He co-wrote all of Alice Cooper's Trash album a giant hunk of shit, which ended up in the trash after I made the poor decision to buy it. The track "Poison" could have been written by the band Poison.

This album also prominently features Kip Winger, as a co-writer. Kip,  besides serving as a living 80's punchline, fronted the band Winger, who I have to assume were awful, since I can't think of one good reason why the fuck would I would actually bother sitting down and listening to them. Y'know? 

Then he went on to co-write "Dude Looks Like A Lady" with Aerosmith, taking brutally annoying to a completely new level schmaltzy rock ballads. ("Angel," anyone? "Crazy"? are you barfing in your own mouth yet?) That opened the flood gates for them to follow the same formula and polluted the airwaves a dozen other times, including the song from that stupid meteor movie. Thanks.

The problem I have with this guy is that he helped popularize the commercial radio friendly rock ballad, ruining a lot of decent bands directly or indirectly in the 80's and influencing countless more. The songs he writes with flat-out awful, annoying artists; "Livin' La Vida Loca" and "She Bangs" with Ricky Martin, "How Am I Supposed To Live Without You" by Michael goddamned fucking Bolton for Christ's sake by are catchy like SARS and twice as devastating. They ooze out of the speakers from a.m. radio and burrow into your eardrums, straight into your brain like that worm in "Wrath of Khan".

Other career lowlights include;

Clay Aiken, Bo Bice and Kelly Clarkson from ... that show (queasy).

Bif Naked "I Love Myself Today (barfing),

RuPaul (continuing to barf),

Roxette (barfing violently),

Boyzone (wow, that's a lotta barf), whoa ...

"The Thong Song" by Sisquo (laughing a little and starting to choke on barf).

Wow. Good job, dude. Way to whore yourself out to the absolute bottom of the sub-sub-barrel and make music that much shittier in the process.

Fuck you, Desmond. Fuck you right in the ear.

Rock 'n' Roll Damnation: Lou Pearlman

"I Live On Peanut Butter Sandwiches I Don't Care."

Once in awhile a musical genius or visionary comes around and leaves a mark on the entire music world. On the flip side of that coin, for everyone who made music better over the past 20 years is someone who fucked it up way worse than it was before. These aren't simply bad artists, producers, business people, impresarios, etc., those come and go. These are people who have started the trends, changed the styles and ultimately the way we listen to (and in some cases watch) music.

Without further adieu; Louis Jay Pearlman, this is your life.

This fat fuck saw the success of New Kids On The Block and decided to recreate it with a boy band of his own, first as the musical Svengali of The Backstreet Boys and then NSYNC. Two heinously awful, plastic pop bands to be sure but, honestly, if you hadn't clicked off MTV before the boy band resurgence, then shame on you. These bands just made the decision to tune out a bit easier.

 Lou building himself a band, in itself is not especially noteworthy; musical acts have been cobbled together this way before, most notably the Monkees and the Sex Pistols. Lou just turned this process into an art.

He proved once again that nobody knows what makes pre-pubescent girls swoon and faint like creepy middle-aged men. Screwy Louie coached (and some have charged, molested young twinks (I read Dan Savage) in a sort of boy band bootcamp.

They were shown how to walk, talk, pout, dress and finally, to cut out the pesky creative process altogether, given pre-written songs and slick production. Voila!

They even made a reality show ("Making The Band") about this process where entrants into the molestation sweepstakes were whittled away each week, until "winners" were chosen. This show gave us "O-Town.(Yes, the correct answer is "who?" For this, I hold him directly responsible for the American-Idolization of music.

         Annoying but who cares?

  

Who ... are you people?                                         The "O" stands for "oh, please stop touching my junk, Mr. Pearlman

 

Lou's formula has become the norm in the entertainment industry.  I therefore hold him personally responsible for Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken, Rockstar INXS, Gene Simmons' Rock School, My mom's admiration for Adam Lambert, Bo Bice, Brooke Hogan and more. Any of those single offences could be forgivable but this man has turned music in the 21st century into one retarded talent show.

Congratulations on your award, dickhead, you've earned it.